“The other professorsdon’t respect me,” she explained two days later, back in Oxford, as they walked to a church, the landlady having accepted Gabriel’s application. Elodie’s hair was unraveling from the intricate arrangement she’d spent hours concocting, her white dress was really far too matrimonial for the occasion, and somewhere along the way she’d lost her quiet dignity, perhaps in the same place as the handkerchief she’d bought for the traditional “something blue.” Every few yards she glanced at her husband-to-be, still not quitebelieving the situation she found herself in. He just stared ahead, giving the impression he was walking alone. Nevertheless, Elodie couldn’t stop talking.
“They think an unwed female professor is a terrible idea. That’s why I’m agreeing to marry you.” (Well, and the fact that she was an idiot, unable to keep her thoughts in her own head.)
“Uh-huh,” Gabriel answered, glowering at a nearby oak that was casting its old russet leaves like wishes onto the footpath.
Actually, now that she mentioned it, Elodie felt quite heated on the subject. “Women have been allowed tertiary education for a hundred years now, thanks to Queen Charlotte’s sponsoring it, and yet Oxford’s geography staff think a woman with a doctorate is something bizarre. Never mind that there’s a female ornithology professor even younger than I am; never mind that I know what I’m doing. I have more field experience than most of them put together, but do they care?”
“How strange,” Gabriel said as he watched a squirrel scamper up the tree with a paperback novel in its mouth.
“Yes, exactly! Strange is just how I would describe it. Strange, and yet so very common. Misogynistic. The departmental secretary told me outright that I’d plague other professors with my ‘tempting availability.’ ”
“Hm.”
“My mother said that was probably just his way of asking me on a date.”
Gabriel almost tripped on the edge of a cobblestone. “What?” he said, looking at her finally, his forehead creased with a frown.
“I know! Can you believe it?”
“Didyoubelieve it?” he asked in return.
She huffed a laugh. “No. The only dates Hammerson knows about are the ones he buys at the greengrocer’s in an effort to be cosmopolitan.”
Gabriel glared at the church farther along the street as they continued toward it. He clearly did not want conversation, but if Elodie had ever found an off switch within herself, she’d lost it again long ago.
“When I’m married to you, they’ll have to respect me.” (For no other reason than the fear that, if they didn’t, Professor Tyrant might come andlookat them.)
“So,” Gabriel said, “if we do this, I get decent housing, and you gain the respect of your peers? And you think that’s a good deal?”
Elodie recognized that he was offering her a chance to withdraw, and she considered it—which is to say, immediately, completely refused it. Her proposal may have been accidental, but the opportunity to marry Gabriel Tarrant was, as her more modish students would say, a no-brainer.
In other words, she failed to apply her brain to it.
“Yes,” she answered.
Twenty minutes later, she was standing in a quiet, sun-spangled chapel, trying hopelessly to repair her coiffure while Gabriel persuaded the vicar to marry them.
Ten minutes after that, they were pronounced man and wife. Gabriel lowered his head to kiss her.
“Er, we don’t do that bit in the Church of Britain,” the vicar interjected—but he could have broken into a flamboyant aria and Elodie wouldn’t have noticed. Gabriel mustn’t have noticed either, for he went ahead and pressed his lips gently against hers.
Although he touched her nowhere else, Elodie feltembraced by his entire being. Her heartbeat turned to stars, and her brain dissolved into a golden haze of pleasure from which she only grudgingly emerged some two days later, in Gabriel’s flat, in Gabriel’s bed, the marriage having been consummated to a degree that did not just meet but delightfully exceeded legal requirements. (They were, after all, two people who liked to be very thorough in what they did.) Any initial shy awkwardness had been vanquished by her joyous nature, his cool arrogance, and the excellent quality of the kissing.
It seemed a positive start, even if there was a small debate over the correct placement of used towels in the bathroom (which, Elodie learned, was apparently not “in a heap on the floor”). On the third day, they walked across to the rental house on Holywell Street, their companionable quiet feeling like a magic spell held in place by the gold ring on Elodie’s finger, which Gabriel had unexpectedly produced. On the doorstep of ninety-nine, Gabriel introduced her to the landlady as his wife. That Elodie managed not to giggle would have made her parentsastonishedproud.
But the landlady barred the threshold to them. “I’ve already rented it,” she said.
They stared at her in disbelief. “We had an agreement,” Gabriel said.
“Sorry. Dr. Costas made me a better offer.”
“Dr. Andro Costas?” Gabriel asked.
“You know him?”
“Tall. Blond. Abachelor.”
The woman winked at Elodie. “Yes, well, he’s going to supplement the rent with free massages for my nervous condition. He has a special vibratory device.” And she shut the door in their faces.
